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Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

Ummmm...what if we are not physically strong enough to "strongly resist"? I can't do that to most people in my dojo. But I can be really flexible and fluid, stay connected, and light where it won't work unless they properly control me. It's the opposite end of resisting by strength in my boat.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

Quote:

Anne Marie Giri wrote:

Ummmm...what if we are not physically strong enough to "strongly resist"? I can't do that to most people in my dojo. But I can be really flexible and fluid, stay connected, and light where it won't work unless they properly control me. It's the opposite end of resisting by strength in my boat.

Actually Ann-Marie this is the best form of resistance imo. It negates the technique through relaxation, centering and not letting your balance be taken. A sensitive sense of touch and motion here is of great value.

This is how we practice during resistance randori. Strength and muscle resistance actually can make it much easier for one to be thrown as to do this the body goes into one of 2 modes - Tension of the limb to resist kansetsu waza, which means that the legs need to stay a bit relaxed to keep balance, this can be countered by attacking the body with a throw like irimi nage. The other option is where the upper body is tensed to avoid being thrown, in this case the arms need to relaxed to maintain balance, this can be countered by applying a joint technique. Relaxation and flowing with the technique allows neither of these openings. "Be like water" and all that - works like a charm.

As far as the poll question goes, we resist strongly (by tai sabaki and muscular resistance, not by trying to KO our partner) every class, going from light resistance to heavy during the course of kakari geiko to randori geiko.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

BTW, in my dojo the most "resistive" uke who is very difficult to unbalance is a girl. She does not resist in a physical sence, but it's just does not work if you did even a very small mistake. Magic...

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aik

Quote:

Jonathan Punt wrote:

Should you allow tori to practice their Aikido or should we make it as difficult as possible for them to train?

You should never make it difficult for them to train. Throwing yourself even when their technique is ineffective, for example, makes it extremely difficult for someone to train.
One should pitch the level of 'resistance' according to a person's ablity, and also vary it according to what you're trying to achieve.
There's no point in frustrating all tori's attempts at a waza, but similarly if you never offer any resistance at all you deny them any opportunity at real practice.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

When they ask for strength I give them strength. Some people like to train that way, and some people occasionally ask me to exert some muscle to test the beginnings of techniques...Like some of the smallest women in our Dojo that want to see if something will "work" against a large and strong male. Some people like to train with a lot of force involved, I try to give them what I can and still protect myself.

All of this is fun, especially when the technique works with no muscle on the other persons end, watching their eyes light up when a 4'11" person throws me when I am trying to grab them forcefully enough to hold them is wonderful! And most of the time they have to do this with flow and fluidity, in which case it feels a lot like an amusement park ride to me.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

My feeling about this is, uke's job is to give nage what s/he needs in order to learn, which can (depending on the situation) be anywhere from fighting mightily not to be thrown, to practically throwing oneself. There's not going to be a one-size-fits-all answer that's appropriate for everyone from beginner to yudansha and every situation from learning a brand-new throw to debugging a testing technique.

I personally love resisting, especially if I can do it by not allowing my balance to be taken. But my teachers have been clear that I shouldn't indulge this to the point of not giving nage what they need in order to progress.

The exercise we particularly use to make this point is kokyu dosa. I know that my fourth-dan teacher can make herself completely immovable to someone at my level. I've seen her sit calmly while a strong man threw his whole body weight into trying to move her. (And when she got tired of this demonstration, she shifted slightly and he got to throw his whole body weight into the mat.) But when she takes ukemi for me, she only exerts herself to the point where I have to demonstrate my best technique in order to throw her, not to the point where I flatly won't be able to do so. (I actually had to coax her to demonstrate the full-resistance level, because I'm a scientist at heart and I wanted to know.) And she coaches the people at my level on how to figure out what that appropriate resistance is, when we train with someone junior to ourselves.

I admit, though, Ithe most sheer fun I have with kokyu dosa is taking ukemi for the first kyus. Yudansha can always throw me no matter what I do. People of my own rank and below need a careful choice of resistance level, because for the way we do kokyu dosa the student's ability to resist seems to slightly outstrip their ability to throw, so equal-skill practice can be discouraging. But the first kyus ask their juniors for the best (ki-based) resistance they can possibly give, and I have to say it tickles me pink when I can occasionally stop them, or at least make them really work hard for the throw.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

Coincidently, at our last training session our sensei explained something his sensei taught him along these lines. 1+9=10, 5+5=10, and 9+1=10. The principle, if I can explain it correctly, is that if uke puts in a "1" for force, you must use a force of "9" to make the technique work. If uke comes at you hard (a "9"), you should only need a small force ("1") for your technique to be effective.

In my limited experience (remember I'm a newbie) if my uke has a 'wet-noodle' feel to him/her, it becomes difficult to make the things work the way they should.

I really like my sensei's ability to explain things like this. I consider him a great teacher.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

Hello everyone,

I think there are several ways to resist nage. I also think that at times, resisting is appropriate. Sometimes it's not.

For example, during kata practice where nage is attempting to do a specific technique, it is not appropriate to resist insomuch as deliberately trying not to be thrown. Uke has his own job to do which consists of a preset response to the kuzushi being applied. In other words, it's kata for both nage and uke. In my opinion, the only appropriate resistance in this training scenario would be to try to regain your balance to another dangerous position. If, in fact, uke does regain balance during an attempted kata technique, both participants understand that the attempted technique was unsuccessful and adjustments need to be made. Furthermore, it is very easy to "cheat" as uke since he/she already knows what's going to happen. Starting and attack at one speed and then speeding up the recovery to regain balance is one small example of "cheating". During kata practice, uke has the simple (ha) task of giving an honest attack and attempting to stay dangerous to tori without speeding up, stopping, or recovering to some direction other than where kuzushi is applied. If uke does anything other than that, more than likely, the attempted technique is no longer appropriate to the circumstances. A good, honest uke is the key to learning Aikido. Being a good, honest uke is even better. Knowing this, I think that uke's job is the most important, and difficult, in the dojo.

It is however appropriate to resist nage during practice when it is agreed that that is what's to be practiced. In our dojo we call this randori. In other words," I'm going give you an honest attack, after that, good luck". Even under these"conditions", some behavior is inappropriate. For example, stopping, failing to participate, and speeding up in an attempt to not be thrown stalls the learning process. So what is appropriate? Trying to feel where Nage is breaking balance and beat them there is a start. Recovering to some spot other than where balance is broken (at the right time, while maintaining musubi) is also good. Changing the rhythm of the "dance" can work too. These things are very hard to learn to do without cheating. The best way to learn to attempt to counter legitimately, believe it or not is to "not care who wins or loses"( That's from my teacher..Chuck Clark) and fall down. I'll say it again... grab the most senior person you can get your hands on...attack...stay dangerous as long as you can and then FALL DOWN. Eventually, you will become very sensitive. At some point, hopefully, we will learn that the best way to resist a technique is to not resist that technique. Who would have thought? In my opinion, resisting by getting strong or trying to "hide" your center from nage is always counterproductive to learning Aikido. I can take wrestling at the local gym.

Finally, my frail definition of resisting strongly really translates to not participating or trying to get away. In which case nage can stop the attempt at the technique because uke is no longer dangerous.

Re: Poll: How often do you strongly resist your partner's technique as uke during aikido training?

I had my 2.nd Kyu test on Monday. I demonstrated the techniques on a guy, whom I had practised with just 1 or 2 times. I was asked to do kata dori (ikkyo-nikkyo-sankyo and yonko). But the guy was holding really hard, and resisted while I was trying to do my technique...

as Ron said "punch in nose"
I just touched his chin softly

it worked, I walked in for ikkyo but resistance again. You know, in "classical" ikkyo, you do 2 steps (push his arm to his head and pull it while walking on the different direction)...he did not let me do that and I forced to lie him, directly where I was standing...

result; sensei told me to tread my uke kinder (I could not blame - "he is resisting", could I ?)

I resist while practising when I think that he is doing wrong. I do not like saying "you are doing it wrong". What's more, if he is performing the technique correct - resisting does not work anyway.